Avenging Angels Read Free Page A

of Art Auction Mart, he was dressed like a down-market riverboat gambler: red canvas vest, white shirt, black trousers, and a skinny black tie. The kids that lugged the sale items wore jeans, tennis shoes, and baggy red T-shirts labeled ONE WORLD in eight-inch-high iron-on letters.
    The verbal cadence was hypnotic. Bree was disoriented by the shouting, the background music, and the bursts of applause from the auctioneer’s assistants, meant to jolt the audience into bidding. She sat up a little straighter in the folding chair, to get rid of the feeling she was trapped in a TV game show among people who knew her even though she didn’t know them.
    “Do I hear four-fifty, four-fifty, four-fifty and a little bit more ?”
    Antonia raised her numbered paddle and called out, “Twenty dollars!” As loud as her sister was—and Antonia had trained with some pretty good coaches in her pursuit of a stage career—nobody noticed until she leaped to her feet and bellowed, “Twenty- five dollars,” louder than Patti Lupone bellowing “Everything’s Comin’ Up Roses” in Gypsy.
    “Thank you very much,” said the auctioneer, unflapped at the insult implicit in Antonia’s rock- bottom bid. “Do I hear fifty, fifty, fifty and a little bit more ?”
    Antonia stuck her chin out and got down to business. After a spirited exchange of bellows, she nailed the limestone urns for forty-five dollars and settled into her chair with a satisfied grin. “Am I good, or what?”
    “Or what,” Bree said. “It’s because you’re louder than God and terrified the poor man into submission. What are you going to do with those urns, anyhow?”
    Antonia followed the removal of the urns to the holding area with a watchful eye. “It’s for George Bernard Shaw,” she said darkly. “Otherwise known as Greatly Boring Shaw. I told you we’re doing Pygmalion at the Savannah Rep, didn’t I? We were supposed to be doing My Fair Lady, right? I would have nailed an audition for the singing Eliza. But no. John Allen Cavendish himself thought we should go back to the original Shaw. So we are. And let me tell you—that old Victorian had a mania for scenes on lawns and terraces. Also a mania for putting anyone under thirty to sleep, which is me, of course, and even you, although just barely.” She glowered. “I’ll have to kill you if you tell anybody I said that. About Shaw. Not about the fact you’re practically thirty. Anyhow, the urns will give the terrace a nice English manor house look even if they were made in China three weeks ago. I’ll stuff them full of fake ivy.” Suddenly, she clutched her head and groaned. “I’ve just got to move on from this, Bree. The tech managing part, I mean. I love anything to do with the theater, you know that. But I want to act!”
    Bree didn’t give her sister a sympathetic pat, although she wanted to. Antonia had spent most of the last week happily memorizing huge chunks of Shavian dialogue for the previous day’s audition, and it’d been a bust. She auditioned faithfully for a role in each new production and it looked as if she was going to remain assistant stage manager for quite a while. Unless she could convince Tully O’Rourke she should be part of her newly resurrected Shakespeare Players.
    “So,” Bree said brightly. “Did you get what you needed? Can we think about bumping into Tully O’Rourke and then going home?”
    Antonia rolled her eyes. “Like, hello? Did you hear me mention fake ivy?”
    “Right.” Bree settled back with a sigh and took a sip of iced tea. The World of Art Auction Mart was still keeping potential bidders happy. Those employees not engaged in clapping and hauling continued to pass around trays of sweet rolls, cold drinks, and fruit salad. The tea was brewed, not powdered, and tasted faintly of lemon, which made it more than palatable, but she hoped the fake ivy was coming up for bid pretty soon so they could get on with the O’Rourke estate.
    Up on stage, three